


let's be reborn

by theblueberryreign



Series: training trio week 2020 [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Background Shirogane Tsumugi, Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Multi, Suicide, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25951915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theblueberryreign/pseuds/theblueberryreign
Summary: day 1 of training trio week 2020(pre-game/post-game)---“I don’t want to be me anymore.” Shuichi says softly, hanging his head.Maki and Kaito, his roommates and best friends look concernedly at him for what feels like several long, long moments.“Yeah. I get that. I completely do.”  Maki says, and they let the conversation drop.
Relationships: Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito, Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito/Saihara Shuichi, Harukawa Maki/Saihara Shuichi, Momota Kaito/Saihara Shuichi
Series: training trio week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883560
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	let's be reborn

**Author's Note:**

> pre-game/post game

“I don’t want to be me anymore.” Shuichi says softly, hanging his head.

Maki and Kaito, his roommates and best friends look concernedly at him for what feels like several long, long moments.

“Yeah. I get that. I completely do.” Maki says, and they let the conversation drop.

Kaito’s hands- potting soil under his fingernails stroke through Shuichi’s hair as he takes a long drag of his cigarette, ending it with a small coughing fit.

Shuichi sighs, gently, he pulls the thing from between Kaito’s lips and puts it out on his own arm. They have an ashtray, they do. But frankly it’s on the other side of the room and Shuichi doesn’t feel like standing up. It’s not like his parents haven’t done that much often and worse.

Shuichi thinks about his character and decides that he doesn’t want the guy’s parents to be in the picture. An uncle or aunt would do.

Execution music trills on in the background.

\---

Maki’s pen dances between her fingers, as the three of them ever the trio pore over these forms together. Her wrist is filled with beautiful intricate drawings, so that when she felt alone, she’d reach for a pen, rather than a knife.

One of her boyfriends- she’s not sure who- put on soft lo-fi music in the background, and she tilts her head back, grabbing her stuffed bunny, a singular possession that survived the hell orphanage. She could swear the higher-ups were some sort of cult. It pulled a wry smile at her lips- maybe that would be a good backstory for an epic danganronpa character.

She hugs the bunny to her chest and lets herself slump onto Kaito. She closes her eyes and thinks that she might actually want to continue living this life. To love these two men who mend her more than she has ever loved anybody at all (including herself.)

She knows it’s not healthy- “You can’t love others if you don’t love yourself” - it was a mantra of her best friend, whose shoes she’d found beside the railings of their dorms’ balcony. No accident.

So she lets the ball drop and with a long suffering sigh opens her eyes. Kaito’s face is an open expression of concern while Shuichi simply knits his eyebrows together, but they mean the same thing, the same unspoken message- “are you okay?’

Maki shakes her head ‘no’ and asks another question.- “What should my character’s last name be? You know I don’t have one legally.” 

A comfortable thinking silence falls in between them. 

“Harukawa,” Shuichi suggests.

“Harukawa,” Maki repeats, tasting it. “Harukawa Maki. Why?”

“You confessed to us by Ana-no-kawa, in the spring.” He explains. “Sentimental, I guess. It’s not like we’ll remember each other.”

“I like it.” Maki says, “I do.”

It goes on the form. 

Their love may as well stay, she thinks, as she sketches up an image of an Ultimate Child Caregiver. A kind character against this cruel world.

Kind characters always meet tragic ends.

(She includes a sketch of her choking someone in the aftermath of a trial. She doesn’t know what they’ll make of that. Maybe her character has a secret ,maybe it’s how she’ll meet her end. At least it might make an interesting scene).

\---

Kaito feels like this is it. This is the end of this downward spiral, he’s been on since highschool.

He wonders if this is how his mom felt, 15 years of age between them when she left her new born baby and filled out these forms.

He’s intimately familiar with this process, from a kid who loved these characters, and wanted to be just like his cool and brave and self-sacrificing mom when he grew up. To a teen who found out the true nature of the show- the real, despair stricken teens and young adults who willingly let themselves be brainwashed and killed. The coward’s way out. 

And now freshly 19, the day of international space travel a week behind him. Following his mother’s footsteps in the end.

(No, he’s not. He’s going in with people he loves and cares for, he’s not giving up, just… realistically, the last months of his life might as well be a hero. So many lives had changed for the better because of Danganronpa  
It’s an excuse and he knows it, but he hopes Shuichi and Makiroll don’t.)

Hundreds of thousands (from Japan alone, other countries have other alike shows) fill out these forms and submit them every year. He’s been to the headquarters as a young child watching as they narrowed these sheets down to exactly 99,000, who were invited to the preliminary auditions.

After several rounds, only 16 would make the cut. 16, as Enoshima had done, when the world’s opinions had declared her a monster, before time healed all wounds, and they simply watched the drama and action.

He knows this is it. The end to this slow death he’s inflicted on himself, from far too many diagnosed and undiagnosed and legal and illegal substances he needs to make his lungs work.

Kaito’s guaranteed to be accepted, for the viewers have always loved legacy characters. They don’t see the tragedy behind it, how the world failed to protect a new generation. 

Of course they don’t. Not like the three of them do.

The cameras roll for the preliminary auditions, and he’s honest, admitting he just wants to be a hero.

(When he passes, they make him film a fake audition tape. Following a script, talking about fame and fortune. He’s not sure what for, but he is a good actor.)

\---

Shuichi offers to be the one to drop off the forms- he needs the fresh air, the last look at his hometown before they’re gone (even if he survives, he’s still gone). He knows this town better than anyone else, having often ducked out of home and turned off his phone, exploring back alleys and popping into shops he’d never seen before for a trinket or snack before inevitably, he’d end up at the low-class Momota residence, disgracing the Saihara name if he was seen entering or exiting.

Between the three of them, he knew he had the best and most memories of this area. Kaito was too sickly as a child to move around much, prone to coughing up blood, something he’d still do when he overstressed, Maki wasn’t even from here, taking the train to see her best friends, and limiting her time to just hanging out from them. 

Shuichi felt a soft smile pull at his lips as he thought of the two loves of his lives. He’d get the three of them takeaway on the route back.

And it's half a month after he gets back with Thai that all three of them receive an audition invitation.

They give each other advice. Shuichi makes a show of callousness and cruelness, a stand out against the thousands who are desperate.

The second he goes on an excited tangent about how he'll be the first Ultimate Detective to be the blackened. A stand out from the hesitant suggestions.

The third and final audition, in front of the executives and the season ringleader- a girl around his age with blue hair. They replay all the tapes, and ask him to audition once more. Anything to convince Team Danganronpa that they should pick him for the 16, out of the 100 (give or take) left. 

"Anything to convince you?" Shuichi asks, and they nod.

So he spills out an entire story, a tale of a weakling, an unconfident boy who makes friends and loses them, how he grows with the lessons his friends left him and in a relapse betrays them. He describes the murder in detail, and then he quite nearly fantasizes about his execution.

He drops the act, and stares at those people. He admits it. Both his parents are in the entertainment industry, and he knew how to make himself stand out. He'd do anything, anything, to get in the 53rd run of Danganronpa. To stop being himself.

(Kaito and Maki were the only ones who had made this life worth living.)

Tears well up in his eyes, genuine, but not for the reason they think.

The executives stare at him, like they've never seen anyone pull something like that and he's dismissed.

Later, as he's leaving, the girl with long blue hair- the season's ringleader - chases him down the hallway, chest heaving.

"How?" She asks, and Shuichi tilts his head in response. "How do you do it? Come up with such… cruel plans. Clearly…" she pauses and tries to find the words. 

She never does, but Shuichi understands anyway, and answers honestly.

"It's not hard to be cruel, when the world's been cruelest." The world except two people.

The girl swallows thickly, and looks away from Shuichi. "This'll be my first season as the ringleader. I… if you get in, I hope you don't mind if I change the story you gave a bit."

\---

A bit was an understatement, Kaito thinks.

All three of them get in, and two come out alive as new people, with only bodies and names (no memories or personality) to prove a previous life had ever existed.

Only Kaito could really remember, and only right when he coughed up blood in the spaceship, and his memories all came rushing back.

The memories of the love the three of them had for each other. Grabbing his inhaler as a kid and bouncing over to introduce himself to the stiff and hurt boy from here, and the girl who's foster home was about to give her back to the orphanage. 

That life ends as they all lay around a flashback light before the games started, sharing audition stories and wondering what the ringleader meant, saying that to Shuichi.

But their love continues, because even reborn as completely new people, they'd gravitated together, as soulmates often did.

Gravitated together. He's not surprised when Shuichi wraps up his last case and looks over their balcony as he removes his shoes. 

When Maki uses knowledge from her fictional life to track down someone who can give her illegal substances.

He's not surprised. He greets them at the entrance and thinks that if he'd been stronger, maybe he could've been there for them in life.

He lets them cry into his shoulders, and if really he means to be strong now yet he breaks down too and whispers "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

As they pull apart he swallows his guilt and scratches the back of his head. "Shouldn't have done that, I'm supposed to be the--"

"Shh, stop that." Shuichi shushes him, soft spoken yet confident.

"Doesn't matter now." Maki says, a firm tone that left no room to argue.

It really doesn't. 

He leans on Shuichi's shoulder, and Maki leans on him.

Ever the trio, for the rest of eternity.


End file.
